Time to rethink UK’s engagement with Saudi Arabia

The
UK has long been criticised for its close relationship with Saudi
Arabia but
it is time to rethink it.

People hold a wheelchair recovered from under the wreckage of a house at the site of a Saudi-led air strike on an outskirt of the northwestern city of Saada, Yemen August 4, 2017. Picture by: NAIF RAHMA/Reuters/PA Images. All rights reserved. Many
Yemenis increasingly see the UK’s arms sales
in recent years as
a vote in favour of the war in their country, – a sign of its
complicity. While trade and arms deals have brought in billions in
recent years, the deals are damaging the UK’s international
reputation.

As
the Yemeni crisis deteriorates from bad to worse and the country
faces the worst cholera outbreak in history, it is time for the UK to
rethink its foreign policy approach with Saudi Arabia. Failure to do
so runs counter to the UK’s interests and could potentially
compromise its long-term security and commercial gains, as well as
its ability to influence the peace process within the Middle East.

The UK is able to play an important role as mediator by pushing
for peace in the region and this requires a rethink of UK engagement
with Saudi Arabia.

A
three-point proposal which UK government must consider:

1. The
UK must suspend all arms sales that have the potential to be used
against civilians until a sustainable peace in Yemen is achieved.
Since the beginning of the conflict, one
in three Saudi airstrikes have hit civilian sites in Yemen.
Over 10,000 people have been killed and at least 40,000 injured in
the conflict. Besides the human toll, Saudi’s airstrikes have also
resulted in the demolition of Yemen’s already limited
infrastructure with the destruction of roads, bridges and factories.
We need to start by banning helicopters and fighter jets, along with
their guided missile systems.

Despite
the UK’s donation of £85 million over the past year, its
humanitarian commitment to the conflict is fundamentally compromised
by arms sales to Saudi Arabia. The High Court has recently rejected
claims that the Government is acting unlawfully by failing to suspend
the sale of UK arms to Saudi Arabia. The UK should not be
contributing to the death toll in Yemen but, with this court ruling,
it has come uncomfortably close to complicity, with UK military and
companies implicated in the operation of Saudi’s bombing sorties.
Nevertheless, every country has the right to defend itself.
Restrictions should only be applied to arms that can be used to
attack targets in Yemen but not to defensive arms which the Saudis
need to protect themselves against Houthi cross-border attacks.

Unless
the UK government reviews its arms trade interests, it is damaging
its international moral standing and
the
humanitarian principles that
must be protected.
But this is not just about morality. It is also about the UK’s
security and commercial interests to exert every pressure to end a
war that has led to Al-Qaida and ISIS thriving in ungoverned spaces.

2. The
UK must call for better international surveillance at Yemeni ports.
The current Saudi-led coalition has been blocking shipments of
humanitarian supplies for
fear of the Iranian supply of weapons to the Houthis.
Saudi Arabia has accused Iran of supplying weapons to Shiite rebels
in Yemen and urged the U.N. Security Council to impose sanctions on
Tehran for violating an arms embargo. Ensuring that Iran does not
supply weapons to the Houthis should not result in expanding a
humanitarian crisis, recently described by the UN as the largest
humanitarian crisis in the world. As a result of the blockade, 7
million people have been pushed to the brink of famine.

The
UK must exert pressure on Saudi Arabia through the UN Security
Council to allow food and medical supplies to reach people in need.
Satellite technology is key to increasing the effectiveness of
surveillance at minimal cost. Opportunities for arms smuggling need
to be shut down and vital international shipping lanes protected from
disruption.

3. The
UK must decisively push for an independent investigation of
violations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) in Yemen by both
sides to the conflict. Amnesty
International recently stated that all
parties to the continuing armed conflict in Yemen have committed war
crimes
and other serious violations of international law with impunity.
The Saudi Arabia-led coalition has bombed hospitals and other
civilian infrastructure and carried out indiscriminate attacks,
killing and injuring civilians so much so that in August 2017,
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said it had lost “confidence in
the Coalition’s ability to avoid such fatal attacks”.

Failure
to hold parties to the conflict accountable to IHL only allows the
current absence of accountability to continue unchallenged,
compromising the UK as a peace broker in the negotiations.

These
proposals are ambitious but consistent with the UK’s public
recognition that there is no military solution in Yemen. Peace is the
only way forward and the UK needs to raise the game urgently. Past
approaches have simply not worked. The scale of Yemen’s unfolding
disaster and economic collapse, with all its humanitarian and
security implications, call for immediate action.

This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.
If you have any queries about republishing please contact us.
Please check individual images for licensing details.